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Beginnings: Geomancy, Builder's Rites, and Electional
Beginnings Geomancy Builder's Rites and Electional Author:Nigel Pennick Events with personation or guising, which involves the suppression or transformation of individuality, are at the heart of European traditional performance. Like a religious service, the performance is perfectly valid even when there are no spectators. The ritual context of human activity expresses the symbolic and psychological function of... more » the event taking place, creating a communion between spectators and performers. In this book, most of the customs are written in the present tense, for it is clear that they are not just things of the past which therefore are gone for ever. Some authors who base their writings about customs and traditions only on old accounts, give the impression that many if not all of them, have ceased to exist. When we read an ancient poem, sing an old song, or play a drama that no-one has staged for a century, we are not reviving or re-enacting them, we are making them present. Traditions can only be said to have died out when the conditions that sustained them have passed away and the« less